Athletes and scientists cooperate for the 2024 Summer Olympics

Led by École Polytechnique, Sciences 2024 gathers 11 higher education institutions to accompany French athletes in their quest for medals for the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games. This project is supported by the French Ministry of Sports and has been officially launched on September 4th at l’X.

In 2024, for the first time since 100 years, the Summer Olympics will take place in France. Laura Flessel, the French Minister of Sports has set the objective to double the number of medals won during the last Olympics, and to obtain 15 gold medals at the Paralympic Games. To take up this challenge, Claude Onesta, former handball coach of the French team, has been entrusted with a mission for the high performance athletic “Performance 2024”. Sciences 2024 has been created in this context in order to contribute to the governmental project.

Sciences 2024 aims to help French high-level athletes to enhance their performance for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games by providing them with the research led by scientists and students from 11 higher education institutions. The inauguration of the project, supported by the Ministry of Sports and the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, took place on September 4th at École Polytechnique.

INSEP and CNRS, project partners

At the initiative of École Polytechnique and in partnership with INSEP (National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance) and CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), Sciences 2024 teams will meet high-level athletes and accompany them in disciplines and fields in which science can contribute to performance improvement. These exchanges will enable to highlight issues that will be afterwards studied in laboratories in order to help trainers and athletes with concrete answers.

Sciences 2024 won’t be limited to Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. Beyond that time, the initiative goes further and aims to strengthen links between research and the sporting world, but also to develop innovation in sport-related sciences such as Biomechanics, Biometrics, Big Data, measuring sensors or the textile sector and new materials.